Anton Schweighofer is among those students of Clemens Holzmeister to have had a key impact on the architecture of Austria after 1945. Schweighofer worked as a freelance architect in Vienna from 1959, until 1964 in collaboration with Rupert Falkner. From 1977 to 1999, as professor of architectural typologies and the successor to Karl Schwanzer at Vienna University of Technology, he influenced a large number of today’s architects. “Architecture is like a language — you have to be there to learn about it.” Born in Ayancik on the Black Sea, Schweighofer is an Internationalist and a Generalist who developed an early interest in foreign cultures, he built in India and planned for the Arctic, and was tied to Aldo van Eyck by a lifelong friendship. He has produced an extensive body of work where “spaces for the community” play a core role. Schweighofer has never been interested in architecture per se but always in its social dimension. With the now partly destroyed Stadt des Kindes children’s village, and a House as City and City as House, Schweighofer has maintained the quality of planning and social qualities espoused by Red Vienna.

(admission free)

Photos from the event ‘Az W Classics: Anton Schweighofer’, February 2.2011 at the Architekturzentrum Wien.